Slavery in Asia

{{Main article|Slavery in Afghanistan}}

Slavery was present in the post-Classical history of Afghanistan, continued during the Middle Ages, and persisted into the early 20th century. After the Islamic conquest of Persia, regions of both Persia and Afghanistan that had not converted to Islam were considered infidel regions, and as a result, they were considered legitimate targets of slave raids that were launched from regions whose populations had converted to Islam: for example Daylam in northwestern Iran and the mountainous region of Ḡūr in central Afghanistan were both exposed to slave raids which were launched from Muslim regions. BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI iii. In the Islamic period up to the Mongol invasion https://iranicaonline.org/articles/barda-iii

It was considered legitimate to enslave war captives; during the Afghan occupation of Persia (1722–1730), for example, thousands of people were enslaved, and the Baluch made regular incursions into Southeastern Iran to capture people and turn them into slaves. BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI iv. From the Mongols to the abolition of slavery. https://iranicaonline.org/articles/barda-iv The slave traffic in Afghanistan was particularly active in the northwest, where 400 to 500 were sold annually. In Southern Iran, poor parents sold their children into slavery, and as late as {{circa|1900}}, slave raids were conducted by chieftains in south Iran. The markets for these captives were often in Arabia and Afghanistan; "most of the slave girls employed as domestics in the houses of the gentry at Kandahar were brought from the outlying districts of Ghayn".

The rulers of Afghanistan customarily had a harem of four official wives as well as a large number of unofficial wives for the sake of tribal marriage diplomacy,Ismati, Masoma (1987), The position and role of Afghan women in Afghan society, from the late 18th to the 19th century; Kabul in addition to enslaved harem women known as kaniz ("slave girl"[https://archive.org/stream/the-history-of-afghanistan-fayz-muhammad-katib-hazarahs-siraj-al-tawarikh-by-r.-/The%20History%20of%20Afghanistan%20Fayz%CC%87%20Muh%CC%A3ammad%20Ka%CC%84tib%20Haza%CC%84rah%E2%80%99s%20Sira%CC%84j%20Al-tawa%CC%84ri%CC%84kh%20by%20R.%20D.%20Mcchesney%2C%20M.%20M.%20Khorrami%20%28trans.%2Cann.%29%20%28z-lib.org%29_djvu.txt The History Of Afghanistan Fayż Muḥammad Kātib Hazārah's Sirāj Al Tawārīkh By R. D. Mcchesney, M. M. Khorrami (trans.,ann.)]) and surati or surriyat ("mistress" or concubine)), guarded by the ghulam bacha (eunuchs).Emadi, Hafizullah, Repression, resistance, and women in Afghanistan, Praeger, Westport, Conn., 2002

Most slaves were employed as agricultural laborers, domestic slaves and sexual slaves. In contrast, other slaves served in administrative positions. Slaves in Afghanistan possessed some social mobility, especially those slaves who were owned by the government. Slavery was more common in towns and cities because some Afghan tribal communities did not readily engage in the slave trade; according to some sources, the decentralized nature of Afghan tribes forced more urbanized areas to import slaves to fill labor shortages. Most slaves in Afghanistan had been imported from Persia and Central Asia.Hopkins, B. D. "Race, Sex and Slavery: 'Forced Labour' in Central Asia and Afghanistan in the Early 19th Century." Modern Asian Studies 42, no. 4 (2008): 629-71. Accessed January 12, 2021. {{JSTOR|20488036}}. pp. 629, 652, 653

According to a report of an expedition to Afghanistan published in London in 1871:

{{block quote|The country generally between Caubul (Kabul) and the Oxus appears to be in a very lawless state; slavery is as rife as ever, and extends through Hazara, Badakshan, Wakhan, Sirikul, Kunjūt (Hunza), &c. A slave, if a strong man likely to stand works well, is, in Upper Badakshan, considered to be of the same value as one of the large dogs of the country, or of a horse, being about the equivalent of Rs 80. A slave girl is valued at four horses or more, according to her looks &c.; men are, however, almost always exchanged for dogs. When I was in Little Tibet (Ladakh), a returned slave who had been in the Kashmir army took refuge in my camp; he said he was well enough treated as to food &c., but he could never get over having been exchanged for a dog, and constantly harped on the subject, the man who sold him evidently thinking the dog the better animal of the two. In Lower Badakshan, and more distant places, the price of slaves is much enhanced, and payment is made in coin.|source="Report of "The Mary's" Exploration from Caubul to Kashgar." T. G. Montgomerie. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 41 (1871), p. 146.}}

Amanullah Khan banned slavery in Afghanistan in the 1923 Constitution,{{cite web|url=http://www.afghangovernment.com/Constitution1923.htm |title=Afghan Constitution: 1923 |publisher=Afghangovernment.com |access-date=4 December 2011}} but the practice carried on unofficially for many more years.{{cite web |url=http://www.afghanmagazine.com/2004_06/articles/hsadat.shtml |title=Afghan History: kite flying, kite running and kite banning By Mir Hekmatullah Sadat |publisher=Afghanmagazine.com |access-date=4 December 2011 |archive-date=27 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200927221924/https://afghanmagazine.com/2004_06/articles/hsadat.shtml/ |url-status=dead }} The Swede Aurora Nilsson, who lived in Kabul from 1926 to 1927, described the occurrence of slavery in Kabul in her memoirs,Rora Asim Khan (Aurora Nilsson): Anders Forsberg and Peter Hjukström: Flykten från harem, Nykopia, Stockholm 1998. {{ISBN|91-86936-01-8}}. as well as how a German woman, the widow of an Afridi man named Abdullah Khan, who had fled to the city with her children from her late husband's successor, was sold at public auction and obtained her freedom by being bought by the German embassy for 7,000 marks.

{{See also|Black Sea slave trade|Slave trade in the Mongol Empire}}

Slavery is integral to the social, economic, and political history of Central Asia. Polities of different sizes and structures such as nomadic confederations,Peter Golden, Central Asia In World History,(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 64-65 agrarian city-states,Peter Golden, Central Asia In World History,(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 63-65 and empiresJeff Eden, Slavery and Empire in Central Asia (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2018),13 all engaged in and at various times promoted the enslavement and trade of people and the exploitation of their labor.Susan Whitfield, Silk, Slaves, and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2018), 250-252 While societies across Central Asia independently developed their localized practice of slavery, they also integrated their slave selling network to the development of the Silk Road, which linked dispersed markets throughout Eurasia.Valerie Hansen, 2002, "The Impact of the Silk Road Trade on a Local Community: the Turfan Oasis, 500-800. Paper presented at the New Perspectives on the Tang Conference, Princeton University. Alongside silk, spices, and other commodities of the Silk Road, merchants traded and transported people across Central Asia. As an area with diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious demographic, the people who were enslaved and traded in Central Asia came from a variety of backgrounds and spoke many different languages. In eastern Eurasia, slave selling contracts demonstrate that slave sales were conducted in Chinese, Uyghur, Tibetan, Sogdian, Prakrit, Khotanese, and Tocharian.Wen Xin, "Kingly Exchange: The Silk Road and the East Eurasian World in the Age of Fragmentation (850-1000)", May 13, 2017. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/40046558. Political conquests, economic competition, and religious conversion all mattered in determining who had control over the slave trade, which demographic slave traders targeted, and whose demand slave traders catered to.

{{See also|Khivan slave trade|Bukhara slave trade}}

File:Persian slave.jpg. Painting made in the 19th century]]

Warfare, slave raids, legal punishments, self-sales, or sales by relatives, and inheritance of slave status from birth were the common ways individuals become a slave in Central Asia. Linguistic analysis of the vocabulary used for slavery in early Central Asian societies suggests a strong connection between military actions and slavery.Peter Golden, "The Terminology of Slavery and Servitude in Medieval Turkic", p. 28. in Studies on Central Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel, ed. Devin DeWeese, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 27-56. Third-century Sassanian inscriptions attest to the usage of the word wardag as meaning both "slave" and "captive". Similarly, the 8th-century Turkic Orkhon inscriptions indicate prisoners of war have often designated the status of slavery. Inscriptions found in the First Turkic Khaganate also imply that terms denoting slavery or other forms of subordinate status, such as qul (male slave) and küng (female slave or handmaiden), are frequently applied to a population of defeated political entities.Golden, "Terminology", p. 29.

During the early modern era (16th–18th centuries), Khiva and Bukhara imported large numbers of Europeans slaves kidnapped by the Crimean Tatars.Mayers, K. (2016). The First English Explorer: The Life of Anthony Jenkinson (1529–1611) and His Adventures on the Route to the Orient. Storbritannien: Matador. p. 121 The Crimean slave trade was eradicated in the late 18th century. However Russian captives were still provided via the Kazakh Khanate slave trade. In 1717, 3,000 Russian slaves consisting of men, women, and children were sold in Khiva by Kazakh and Kyrgyz tribesmen.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-8_3jbZU9ikC&dq=Europe+and+the+latest+in+Russian+technology+in+exchange+for+3,000+Russian+slaves,+men,+women,+and+children+who+were+kept+there.&pg=PT85|title=The History of the Central Asian Republics|first=Peter|last=Roudik|date=October 30, 2007|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-0-313-08770-7 |via=Google Books}}

Raids among nomadic tribes and against sedentary societies to loot people were also prevalent practices conducted by polities across Eurasia. After many Central Asian states converted to Islam, they frequently conducted slave raids into non-Muslim territories. Areas where polytheism were practiced were frequently targets of these slave raids. For example, Daylam, the northwestern regions of Iran, Gur in central Afghanistan, the Eurasian steppe, and India had long been targeted by Muslim polities for slave raids.{{Cite web|url=https://iranicaonline.org/articles/barda-iii|title = Welcome to Encyclopaedia Iranica}} The Samanids in Khorasan and Transoxania, and their successor, the Ghaznavids, and later the Saljuqs in Iran.

File:Chaboksavar.jpg tribal groups performed regular slave raids, referred to as alaman]]

Violent encounters are not the only mechanism through which an individual was enslaved. Iranian and Chinese sources attest to the practice of self-enslavement or self-selling. In the Pahlavi Book of a Thousand Judgements, the word tan (body), designates a person who loans oneself or one's relative for a specific period of time to a debtor or creditor as security for a debt. In China, legal code historically prohibited individuals from selling children or other relatives into slavery. However, sale contracts indicate that poverty, famine, and other unfortunate circumstances often compelled individuals to sell or loan themselves, their children, and other relatives.Whitfield, Silk, Slaves, and Stupas, p. 253 This is not to say that slave sales were prohibited in China, however. Tang legal codes regulated the sale of people who were already designated slave status by requiring individuals to provide certificates that demonstrate the individuals were lawfully enslaved.Valerie Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China: How Ordinary People Used Contracts, 600-1400, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 41 In one recorded case, a man sold his daughter and son in order to raise funds to pay for his father's funeral.Whitfield, p. 254.

A notorious slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was the Khivan slave trade, centered in the Khanate of Khiva from the 17th to the 19th century.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,810930,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080307132945/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,810930,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=7 March 2008 |title=Adventure in the East – TIME |magazine=Time |date=6 April 1959 |access-date=4 December 2011}} During the first half of the 19th century alone, some one million Persians, as well as an unknown number of Russians, were enslaved and transported to Central Asian khanates.[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/281379/Ichan-Kala Ichan-Kala], Encyclopædia Britannica{{cite book|last=Mayhew |first=Bradley |title=Fabled Cities of Central Asia: Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva: Robin Magowan, Vadim E. Gippenreiter |isbn=978-0896599642 |year=1989 }}

When the Russian troops took Khiva in 1898 there were 29,300 Persian slaves, captured by Turkoman raiders. According to Josef Wolff (Report of 1843–1845) the population of the Khanate of Bukhara was 1,200,000, of whom 200,000 were Persian slaves.[https://web.archive.org/web/19990128223324/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5246/trade.html Report of Josef Wolff 1843–1845] There were Russian and Swedish slaves, including Brigitta Scherzenfeldt, in the Dzungar Khanate in Central Asia in the 18th century.Åberg, Alf (1991). Fångars elände: karolinerna i Ryssland 1700-1723. (The misery of prisoners. The Carolinians in Russia 1700-1723) Stockholm: Natur & Kultur. Libris 7228808. ISBN 91-27-02743-0 (in Swedish) At the beginning of the 21st century Chechens and Ingush kept Russian captives as slaves or in slave-like conditions in the mountains of the northern Caucasus.{{cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1875162.stm |title=Slave of the Caucasus |publisher=BBC News |date=15 March 2002 |access-date=4 December 2011}}

The slave trade was also an essential aspect of the economy of Central Asian societies. Due to the high demand for slaves in neighboring sedentary empires, Central Asian Turkic nomads supplied the majority of slaves to the Islamic caliphate to the west and the Chinese dynasties to the east. In the Abbasid empire, the establishment of the Mamluk institution created the preference and demand for young, Turkic male slaves due to their supposedly superior military strength.{{cite web | url=https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/mamluk-COM_0657?s.num=0&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.cluster.Encyclopaedia+of+Islam&s.q=Mamluk | title=Mamlūk | date=24 April 2012 }} As a result of these demands, the economy of Central Asian states flourished as they dominated the slave trade. The Khazar Qaghanate,Golden, "Terminology", 37 the Samanids, and later the Ghaznavids, were some of the main suppliers of Turkic military slaves, Circassian slaves, and Russian slaves to Baghdad.

Slavery gradually disappeared from the Caucasus owing to reduced demand for Circassian slaves from the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, Russian imperial policy that used the issue of slaves to infringe upon Ottoman sovereignty, and the actions of the slaves themselves.Jeff Eden, Slavery and Empire in Central Asia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) In Central Asia, informal slavery continued into the Soviet period and some forms of slavery continue to exist today.{{cite web|url=http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/sympo/97summer/galiev.html |title=Traditional Institutions in Modern Kazakhstan |publisher=Src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp |access-date=4 December 2011}}

The tradition of slavery exists today in Russia.{{cite web|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kazakhstan-slavery-survivor-feature/kazakh-teens-enslaved-in-russia-as-sisters-leave-as-mothers-idUSKCN1QH04S |title=Kazakh teens enslaved in Russia as sisters, leave as mothers|publisher=Reuters |date=27 Feb 2019|access-date=10 June 2020}}

{{Main article|Slavery in China}}

Slavery existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty.{{Cite book |last1=Pargas |first1=Damian Alan |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=wdBCDwAAQBAJ|page=523}} |title=Critical Readings on Global Slavery (4 vols.) |last2=Roşu |first2=Felicia |date=December 7, 2017 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-34661-1}} Slavery was employed largely by governments as a means of maintaining a public labour force.{{Cite web |title=Slavery and forced labour in Ancient China and the Ancient Mediterranean |url=https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/news-events/events-archive/events2013/ancient-slavery |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190306234824/https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/news-events/events-archive/events2013/ancient-slavery |archive-date=March 6, 2019 |access-date=March 6, 2019 |publisher=University of Edinburgh}}{{Cite journal |last1=Ober |first1=Josiah |last2=Scheidel |first2=Walter |last3=Shaw |first3=Brent D. |last4=Sanclemente |first4=Donna |date=April 18, 2007 |title=Toward Open Access in Ancient Studies: The Princeton-Stanford Working Papers in Classics |journal=Hesperia |volume=76 |issue=1 |pages=229–242 |doi=10.2972/hesp.76.1.229 |issn=0018-098X |s2cid=145709968}} Until the Han dynasty, slaves were sometimes discriminated against but their legal status was guaranteed. As can be seen from the some historical records as “Duansheng, Marquis of Shouxiang, had his territory confiscated because he killed a female slave”(Han dynasty records of DongGuan), “Wang Mang's son Wang Huo murdered a slave, Wang Mang severely criticized him and forced him to commit suicide”(Book of Han: Biography of Wang Mang). Murder against slaves was as taboo as murder against free people, and perpetrators were always severely punished. Han dynasty can be said to be very distinctive compared to other countries of the same period(In most cases, lords were free to kill their slaves) in terms of slaves human rights.

After the Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to years of poor harvests, the influx of foreign tribes, and the resulting wars, the number of slaves exploded. They became a class and were called "jianmin (Chinese: 贱民)", which in literal terms means "inferior person". As stated in The commentary of Tang Code: “Slaves and inferior people are legally equivalent to livestock products”. They always had a low social status, and even if they were deliberately murdered, the perpetrators received only a year in prison, and were punished even when they reported the crimes of their lords.{{Cite web |date=2024-06-14 |title=Outline of the Senmin system during the Ritsuryo period |url=https://rikkyo.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/547/files/KJ00007959919.pdf}} However, in the later stages of the dynasty, perhaps because the increase in the number of slaves slowed down again, the penalties for crimes against them became harsh again. For example, the famous contemporary female poet Yu Xuanji was publicly executed for murdering her own slave.

{{main|Slavery in China}}

File:Chinese Slave trade.jpg]]

The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radanite Jews.{{cite book|last1=Hirschman|first1=Elizabeth Caldwell|last2=Yates|first2=Donald N.|title=The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales: A Genetic and Genealogical History|publisher=McFarland|isbn=9780786476848|page=51|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zq9iAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA51|access-date=14 February 2017|language=en|date=2014-04-09}} Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans (until Emperor Muzong of Tang prohibited the import of Korean slaves{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IZ_WAAAAMAAJ&q=korean+girls+ming|title=Memoirs of the Research Department, Issue 2|location=|page=63|isbn=|access-date=4 July 2010|last1=(Japan)|first1=Tōyō Bunko}}), Turks, Persians and Indonesians traded into Canton, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India. Tang era slaves could be either prisoners of war or families of Chinese rebels executed for treason.{{cite book|url={{Google books |id=T9AZAQAAIAAJ |plainurl=yes }} |title=The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life: The medieval world|author=Joyce E. Salisbury|authorlink= Joyce E. Salisbury |year=2004|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=|page=316|isbn=978-0-313-32543-4|accessdate=2011-01-09}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XrZQs-6KswMC&q=chinese+slaves+korea&pg=PA49|title=Korea and East Asia: the story of a Phoenix|author=Kenneth B. Lee|year=1997|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|page=49|isbn=978-0-275-95823-7|access-date=4 July 2010}}{{cite book|last1=Davis|first1=David Brion|title=The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195056396|page=51|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IyodFB4SdOIC&pg=PA51|access-date=14 February 2017|language=en|year=1988}} The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, Negritos, and black Africans were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty{{cite book|last1=Schafer|first1=Edward H.|title=The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of Tʻang Exotics|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=9780520054622|pages=45–46|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jqAGIL02BWQC&pg=PA45|access-date=14 February 2017|language=en|year=1963}} during the exchange of the Silk Road. Although various officials such as Kong Kui, the Jiedushi of Lingnan, banned the slave trade, the trade continued.

Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper.Junius P. Rodriguez, "The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery", ABC-CLIO, 1997, pp146 According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), there were also certain numbers of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Han Chinese, who were considered to rank at the bottom of Yuan society by some research, were subjected to particularly cruel abuse.杉山正明《忽必烈的挑战》，社会科学文献出版社，2013年，第44–46頁船田善之《色目人与元代制度、社会－－重新探讨蒙古、色目、汉人、南人划分的位置》,〈蒙古学信息〉2003年第2期

{{Main article|Booi Aha}}

In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called Booi Aha (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "nucai".

In his book China Marches West, Peter C. Perdue stated: "In 1624(After Nurhachi's invasion of Liaodong) "Chinese households....while those with less were made into slaves." The Manchu was establishing a close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him".A History of Chinese Civilization Perdue further pointed out that booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).{{Cite book|last= Perdue|first= Peter |title=China Marches West |publisher=# Publisher: Triliteral |date= April 2005 |page=118|isbn= 978-0-674-01684-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yd-2tiB6k-YC&q=bondservant+in+Manchu+time&pg=PA118}}{{cite book|last1=Rodriguez|first1=Junius P.|title=The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=9780874368857|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ATq5_6h2AT0C&q=chinese%20slaves%20mongols%20manchu&pg=PA146|language=en|year=1997}}

;Various classes of Booi

1. booi niru a Manchu word (Chinese:包衣佐領 or 大内总管), meaning Neiwufu Upper Three Banner's platoon leader of about 300 men.
2. Booi guanlin a Manchu word (Chinese:包衣管領), meaning the manager of booi doing all the domestic duties of Neiwufu.
3. Booi amban is also a Manchu word, meaning high official (Chinese:包衣大臣).
4. Estate bannerman (Chinese: 庄头旗人) are those renegade Chinese who joined the Jurchen, or original civilians-soldiers working in the fields. These people were all turned into booi aha, or field slaves.

Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=90CN0vtxdY0C&q=jonathan+neaman+lipman++begs+enslaves&pg=PA69|title=Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest China|author=Jonathan Neaman Lipman|year=2004|publisher=University of Washington Press|location=Seattle|page=69|isbn=978-0-295-97644-0|access-date=28 November 2010}}

Han Chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xQk97ET1aQMC&q=han+enslaved+begs+turkestani&pg=PA148|title=Opium regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952|author=Timothy Brook, Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi|year=2000|publisher=University of California Press|page=148|isbn=978-0-520-22236-6|access-date=28 November 2010}} Most Chinese in Altishahr were exiled slaves to Turkestani Begs.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MC6sAAAAIAAJ&q=chinese+AFTER+a+while+they+take+east+turkestani+wives+and+gradully+grow+closer+to+local+society&pg=PA203|title=Beyond the pass: economy, ethnicity, and empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864|author=James A. Millward|year=1998|publisher=Stanford University Press|page=145|isbn=978-0-8047-2933-8|access-date=28 November 2010}} Ironically, while free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MC6sAAAAIAAJ&q=marriage+with+east+turkestani+women+involved+not+chinese+merchants+but+manchu+officials,+banner&pg=PA206|title=Beyond the pass: economy, ethnicity, and empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864|author=James A. Millward|year=1998|publisher=Stanford University Press|page=206|isbn=978-0-8047-2933-8|access-date=28 November 2010}}

The Qing dynasty procured 420 women and girl slaves, all of them Mongol, to service Oirat Mongol bannermen stationed in Xinjiang in 1764.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MC6sAAAAIAAJ&q=mongol+slave+women+girls|title=Beyond the pass: economy, ethnicity, and empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864|author=James A. Millward|year=1998|publisher=Stanford University Press|page=305|isbn=978-0-8047-2933-8|access-date=28 November 2010}} Many Torghut Mongol boys and girls were sold to Central Asian markets or on the local Xinjiang market to native Turkestanis.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MC6sAAAAIAAJ&q=torghut+slaves|title=Beyond the pass: economy, ethnicity, and empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864|author=James A. Millward|year=1998|publisher=Stanford University Press|page=305|isbn=978-0-8047-2933-8|access-date=28 November 2010}}

Here are two accounts of slavery given by two Westerners in the late 19th century and early 20th century:

"In the houses of wealthy citizens, it is not unusual to find twenty to thirty slaves attending upon a family. Even citizens in the humbler walks of life deem it necessary to have each a slave or two. The price of a slave varies, of course, according to age, health, strength, and general appearance. The average price is from fifty to one hundred dollars, but in time of war, or revolution, poor parents, on the verge of starvation, offer their sons and daughters for sale at remarkably low prices. I remember instances of parents, rendered destitute by the marauding bands who invested the two southern Kwangs in 1854–55, offering to sell their daughters in Canton for five dollars apiece. ...

The slavery to which these unfortunate persons are subject, is perpetual and hereditary, and they have no parental authority over their offspring. The great-grandsons of slaves, however, can, if they have sufficient means, purchase their freedom. ...

Masters seem to have the same uncontrolled power over their slaves that parents have over their children. Thus a master is not called to account for the death of a slave, although it is the result of punishment inflicted by him."Gray, John Henry. (1878). China: A History of the Laws, Manners and Customs of the People, pp. 241–243. Reprint: Dover Publications, Mineola, New York. (2002).

"In former times slaves were slain and offered in sacrifice to the spirit of the owner when dead, or by him to his ancestors: sometimes given as a substitute to suffer the death penalty incurred by his owner or in fulfilment of a vow. It used to be customary in Kuei-chou (and Szü-chuan too, I believe) to inter living slaves with their dead owners; the slaves were to keep a lamp burning in the tomb....

"Slavery exists in China, especially in Canton and Peking.... It is a common thing for well-to-do people to present a couple of slave girls to a daughter as part of her marriage dowery [sic]. Nearly all prostitutes are slaves. It is, however, customary with respectable people to release their slave girls when marriageable. Some people sell their slave girls to men wanting a wife for themselves or for a son of theirs.

"I have bought three different girls: two in Szü-chuan for a few taels each, less than fifteen dollars. One I released in Tientsin, another died in Hongkong; the other I gave in marriage to a faithful servant of mine. Some are worth much money at Shanghai."William Mesny. (13 May 1905). Mesny's Miscellany, Vol IV, p. 399.

In addition to sending Han exiles convicted of crimes to Xinjiang to be slaves of Banner garrisons there, the Qing also practiced reversing exile, exiling Inner Asian (Mongol, Russian and Muslim criminals from Mongolia and Inner Asia) to China proper where they would serve as slaves in Han Banner garrisons in Guangzhou. Russian, Oirats and Muslims (Oros. Ulet. Hoise jergi weilengge niyalma) such as Yakov and Dmitri were exiled to the Han banner garrison in Guangzhou.Yongwei, MWLFZZ, FHA 03-0188-2740-032, QL 43.3.30 (26 April 1778). In the 1780s after the Muslim rebellion in Gansu started by Zhang Wenqing 張文慶 was defeated, Muslims like Ma Jinlu 馬進祿 were exiled to the Han Banner garrison in Guangzhou to become slaves to Han Banner officers. Šande 善德 , MWLFZZ, FHA 03-0193-3238-046, QL 54.5.6 (30 May 1789) and Šande , MWLFZZ, FHA 03-0193-3248-028, QL 54.6.30 (20 August 1789). The Qing code regulating Mongols in Mongolia sentenced Mongol criminals to exile and to become slaves to Han bannermen in Han Banner garrisons in China proper.1789 Mongol Code (Ch. 蒙履 Menggu lüli , Mo. Mongγol čaγaǰin-u bičig ), (Ch. 南省，給駐防爲 , Mo. emün-e-tü muji-dur čölegüljü sergeyilen sakiγči quyaγ-ud-tur boγul bolγ-a ). Mongol Code 蒙例 (Beijing: Lifan yuan, 1789; reprinted Taipei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1968), p. 124. Batsukhin Bayarsaikhan, Mongol Code (Mongγol čaγaǰin – u bičig), Monumenta Mongolia IV (Ulaanbaatar: Centre for Mongol Studies, National University of Mongolia, 2004), p. 142.

Although slavery has been abolished in China since 1910,Commemoration of the Abolition of Slavery Project in 2018, the Global Slavery Index estimated that there are approximately 3.8 million people enslaved in China.{{cite web |url=https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/country-studies/china/ |title=China |work=Global Slavery Index |date=2018}}

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s the Yi people (also known as Nuosu) of China terrorized Sichuan to rob and enslave non-Nuosu including Han people. The descendants of the Han Chinese slaves are the White Yi (白彝) and they outnumber the Black Yi (黑彝) aristocracy by ten to one.{{cite book|last1=Ramsey|first1=S. Robert|title=The Languages of China|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0691014685|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2E_5nR0SoXoC&q=han%20chinese%20slaves&pg=PA252|language=en|year=1989}} As many as tens of thousands of Han slaves were incorporated into Nuosu society every year. The Han slaves and their offspring were used for manual labor.{{cite book|last1=Du|first1=Shanshan|last2=Chen|first2=Ya-chen|title=Women and Gender in Contemporary Chinese Societies: Beyond Han Patriarchy|publisher=Lexington Books|isbn=9780739145821|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zJTAAwAAQBAJ&q=han%20chinese%20slaves&pg=PA150|language=en|date=2013-03-04}} There is a saying that goes like this: "the worst insult to a Nuosu is to call him a "Han" the implication being that "your ancestors were slaves")".{{cite book|last1=Lozny|first1=Ludomir R.|title=Continuity and Change in Cultural Adaptation to Mountain Environments: From Prehistory to Contemporary Threats|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=9781461457022|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Rs_AAAAQBAJ&q=han%20chinese%20slaves&pg=PA346|language=en|date=2013-03-12}}

{{Main article|Slavery in India|Bukhara slave trade}}

The earliest surviving South Asian epigraphy, the mid 3rd Century BCE, Edicts of Ashoka, in Greek and Aramaic, independently identify obligations to slaves (Greek: {{lang|el|italic=set|δούλοις}}, Aramaic: עבד) and hired workers (Greek: {{lang|el|italic=set|μισθωτοῖς}}), later prohibiting the trading of slaves within the Empire.Scott C. Levi (2002), [http://www.jstor.org/stable/25188289 Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade], Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 12, 3, pages 277-288{{Cite web |date=2021-09-15 |title=Ashoka's Edicts and Inscriptions - Civilsdaily |url=https://www.civilsdaily.com/ashokas-edicts-and-inscriptions/ |access-date=2023-05-03 |language=en-US}}

The early Arab invaders of Sind in the 8th century, the armies of the Umayyad commander Muhammad bin Qasim, are reported to have enslaved tens of thousands of Indian prisoners, including both soldiers and civilians.Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg, tr., The Chachnamah, an Ancient History of Sind, 1900, reprint (Delhi, 1979), pp. 154, 163. This 13th-century source claims to be a Persian translation of an (apparently lost) 8th-century Arabic manuscript detailing the Islamic conquests of Sind.Andre Wink, Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 1, Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam, Seventh to Eleventh Centuries (Leiden, 1990) In the early 11th-century Tarikh Yamini, the Arab historian Al-Utbi recorded that in 1001 the armies of Mahmud of Ghazna conquered Peshawar and Waihand (capital of Gandhara) after Battle of Peshawar (1001), "in the midst of the land of Hindustan", and captured some 100,000 youths.Muhammad Qasim Firishta, Tarikh-i-Firishta (Lucknow, 1864).Andre Wink, Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 2, The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th–13th centuries (Leiden, 1997) Later, following his twelfth expedition into India in 1018–1019, Mahmud is reported to have returned with such a large number of slaves that their value was reduced to only two to ten dirhams each. This unusually low price made, according to Al-Utbi, "merchants [come] from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Central Asia, Iraq and Khurasan were swelled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, mingled in one common slavery". Elliot and Dowson refer to "five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women."Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Utbi, Tarikh al-Yamini (Delhi, 1847), tr. by James Reynolds, The Kitab-i-Yamini (London, 1858),Wink, Al-Hind, IIHenry M. Elliot and John Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 vols (London, 1867–77), II, Later, during the Delhi Sultanate period (1206–1555), references to the abundant availability of low-priced Indian slaves abound. Levi attributes this primarily to the vast human resources of India, compared to its neighbors to the north and west (India's Mughal population being approximately 12 to 20 times that of Turan and Iran at the end of the 16th century).Dale, Indian Merchants,

The Siddi are an ethnic group inhabiting India and Pakistan. Members are descended from Bantu peoples from Southeast Africa that were brought to the Indian subcontinent as slaves by Arab and Portuguese slave traders. Similar to the Siddies, in Sri Lanka there are Kaffirs, who were brought to the country as slaves mostly during the Sinhalese-Portuguese war.{{cite journal|last=Shah|first=Anish M.|title=Indian Siddis: African Descendants with Indian Admixture|journal=American Journal of Human Genetics|date=15 July 2011|volume=89|issue=1|pages=154–161|doi=10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.05.030|display-authors=etal|pmid=21741027|pmc=3135801}}

The Delhi was ruled by the Mamluks from 1206 to 1290: Qutb-ud-din Aybak, a slave of Muhammad Ghori rose to power following his master's death. For almost a century, his descendants ruled presiding over the introduction of Tankas and the building of Qutub Minar.

According to Sir Henry Frere, there were an estimated 8 or 9 million enslaved persons in India in 1841. In Malabar, about 15% of the population were slaves. Slavery was officially abolished two years later in India by the Indian Slavery Act of 1843. Provisions of the Indian Penal Code of 1861 effectively abolished slavery in India by making the enslavement of human beings a criminal offense.{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-24160 |title=Slavery :: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia |publisher=Britannica.com |access-date=4 December 2011}}{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24156 |title=Historical survey > Slave-owning societies |publisher=Britannica.com |access-date=4 December 2011}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.wluml.org/english/pubs/pdf/occpaper/OCP-07.pdf|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090429174400/http://www.wluml.org/english/pubs/pdf/occpaper/OCP-07.pdf|url-status=dead|title=Islamic Law and the Colonial Encounter in British India|archivedate=29 April 2009}}{{cite journal|title=Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade |doi=10.1017/S1356186302000329 |date=1 November 2002 |volume=12 |issue=3 |journal=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society |pages=277–288|last1=Levi |first1=Scott C. |s2cid=155047611 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/3960723 }}

There are an estimated five million bonded workers in Pakistan, even though the government has passed laws and set up funds to eradicate the practice and rehabilitate the laborers.{{cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4042207.stm |title=Life as a modern slave in Pakistan |publisher=BBC News |date=25 November 2004 |access-date=4 December 2011}} As many as 200,000 Nepali girls, many

under 14, have been sold into sex slavery in India. Nepalese women and girls, especially virgins, are favored in India because of their fair skin and young looks.{{cite web|title=For Nepali Girls Trafficked to Indian Brothels, Where Is Home?|url=https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/nepali-girls-trafficked-indian-brothels-where-home|access-date=21 August 2021|publisher=pulitzercenter.org}} In 1997, a human rights agency reported that 40,000 Nepalese workers are subject to slavery and 200,000 kept in bonded labor.[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/31672.stm Widespread slavery found in Nepal], BBC News Nepal's Maoist-led government has abolished the slavery-like Haliya system in 2008.[http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/200809/s2357872.htm Slavery criminalised in Nepal], 8 September 2008

This is the reason why casteism, xenophobia, ethnicity and unfair discrimination have given birth to slavery in Pakistan.{{Cite web |last=Raza |first=Shahraj |date=2020-02-13 |title=Modern Day Slavery in Pakistan |url=https://courtingthelaw.com/2020/02/13/commentary/modern-day-slavery-in-pakistan/ |access-date=2023-09-14 |website=Courting The Law |language=en-US}}

{{Main article|Slavery in Japan}}

Slavery in Japan was, for most of its history, indigenous, since the export and import of slaves was restricted by Japan being a group of islands. The export of a slave from Japan is recorded in a 3rd-century Chinese document, although the system involved is unclear. These people were called {{Nihongo|seiko|生口}}, lit. "living mouth". "Seiko" from historical theories are thought to be as prisoner, slave, a person who has technical skill and also students studying abroad to China.:ja:生口{{Better source|reason=per WP:CIRCULAR|date=August 2015}}

In the 8th century, a slave was called {{Nihongo|nuhi|奴婢}} and a series of laws on slavery was issued. In an area of present-day Ibaraki Prefecture, out of a population of 190,000, around 2,000 were slaves; the proportion is believed to have been even higher in western Japan.

Slavery persisted into the Sengoku period (1467–1615), but the attitude that slavery was anachronistic had become widespread.{{cite journal | last =Nelson | first =Thomas | title =Slavery in Medieval Japan | journal = Monumenta Nipponica | volume =59 | year =2004 | issue =4 | pages =463–492 | jstor = }} Oda Nobunaga is said to have had an African slave or former-slave in his retinue.Leupp, Gary P. (2003). [https://books.google.com/books?id=-I6owJcCOdwC&dq=nobunaga+and+interracial+intimacy+in+japan&pg=PA37 Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543–1900, p. 37.]{{Dubious|date=October 2009}} Korean prisoners of war were shipped to Japan as slaves during the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 16th century.{{cite web|author=Henny Savenije |url=http://www.cartography.henny-savenije.pe.kr/ |title=Korea through western cartographic eyes |publisher=Cartography.henny-savenije.pe.kr |date=14 August 2002 |access-date=4 December 2011}}{{cite web|url=http://www.samurai-archives.com/hak.html |title=Hideyoshi and Korea |publisher=Samurai-archives.com |date=25 April 2003 |access-date=4 December 2011}}

In 1595, Portugal passed a law banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves,{{cite book |last=Dias |first=Maria Suzette Fernandes |date=2007 |title=Legacies of slavery: comparative perspectives |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=978-1-84718-111-4 |page=71}} but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor. Somewhat later, the Edo period penal laws prescribed "non-free labor" for the immediate family of executed criminals in Article 17 of the Gotōke reijō (Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711 Gotōke reijō was compiled from over 600 statutes promulgated between 1597 and 1696.Lewis, James Bryant. (2003). [https://books.google.com/books?id=0YIbNlliRswC&dq=hideyoshi+slavery&pg=PA31 Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan, p. 31]-32.

Karayuki-san, literally meaning "Ms. Gone Abroad", were Japanese women who traveled to or were trafficked to East Asia, Southeast Asia, Manchuria, Siberia and as far as San Francisco in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century to work as prostitutes, courtesans and geisha.{{cite news |author=来源：人民网-国家人文历史 |last= |first= |date=2013-07-10 |title=日本性宽容："南洋姐"输出数十万 |url=http://news.takungpao.com/history/story/2013-07/1748611.html |newspaper=Ta Kung Pao 大公报 |location= |access-date= |archive-date=24 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224033443/http://news.takungpao.com/history/story/2013-07/1748611.html |url-status=dead }} In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a network of Japanese prostitutes being trafficked across Asia, in countries such as China, Japan, Korea, Singapore and India, in what was then known as the 'Yellow Slave Traffic'.{{sfn|Fischer-Tiné|2003|pp=163–90}}

As the Empire of Japan annexed Asian countries, from the late 19th century onwards, archaic institutions including slavery were abolished in those countries. However, during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, the Japanese military used millions of civilians and prisoners of war as forced labor, on projects such as the Burma Railway.

According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Kōa-in (Japanese Asia Development Board) for forced labour.{{cite web|url=http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/sino-japanese/minutes_2002.htm |title=Japan's Atrocities of Conscripting and Abusing North China Draftees after the Outbreak of the Pacific War |author=Ju Zhifen |year=2002 |work=Joint study of the Sino-Japanese war }} According to the Japanese military's own record, nearly 25% of 140,000 Allied POWs died while interned in Japanese prison camps where they were forced to work (U.S. POWs died at a rate of 37%).[https://web.archive.org/web/20080207230309/http://www.japantoday.com/jp/book/115 How Japanese companies built fortunes on American POWs] {{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bataan/peopleevents/e_atrocities.html |title=Japanese Atrocities in the Philippines |publisher=Pbs.org |date=14 December 1944 |access-date=4 December 2011}} More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway.{{cite web|url=http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/links.html |title=Links for research, Allied POWs under the Japanese |publisher=Mansell.com |access-date=4 December 2011}} The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military.[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+id0029) Library of Congress, 1992, "Indonesia: World War II and the Struggle For Independence, 1942–50; The Japanese Occupation, 1942–45"] Access date: 9 February 2007.

Approximately 5,400,000 Koreans were conscripted into slavery from 1944 to 1945 by the National Mobilization Law. About 670,000 of them were brought to Japan, where about 60,000 died between 1939 and 1945 due mostly to exhaustion or poor working conditions.{{citation needed|date=March 2013}} Many of those taken to Karafuto Prefecture (modern-day Sakhalin) were trapped there at the end of the war, stripped of their nationality and denied repatriation by Japan; they became known as the Sakhalin Koreans.{{Cite news|last=Lankov|first=Andrei|publisher=The Korea Times|date=5 January 2006|access-date=26 November 2006|title=Stateless in Sakhalin|url=http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200601/kt2006010516434554130.htm|archive-date=21 February 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060221144952/http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200601/kt2006010516434554130.htm|url-status=dead}} The total deaths of Korean forced laborers in Korea and Manchuria for those years is estimated to be between 270,000 and 810,000.{{Cite book| first=R. J. | last=Rummel | title=Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1990 | publisher=Lit Verlag | year=1999 | isbn=978-3-8258-4010-5}}

Available online: {{cite web| title=Statistics of Democide: Chapter 3 – Statistics Of Japanese Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources | work=Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War | url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM | access-date=1 March 2006}}

{{main article|Slavery in Korea}}

The Joseon dynasty of Korea was a hierarchical society that consisted of social classes. Cheonmin, the lowest class, included occupations such as butchers, shamans, prostitutes, entertainers, and also members of the slave class known as nobi. Low status was hereditary, but members of higher classes could be reduced to cheonmin as a form of legal punishment. During poor harvests and famine, many peasants voluntarily sold themselves into the nobi class in order to survive.{{cite web|first1=Young-hoon|last1= Rhee|first2=Donghyu|last2= Yang|title=Korean Nobi in American Mirror: Yi Dynasty Coerced Labor in Comparison to the Slavery in the Antebellum Southern United States|url=https://ideas.repec.org/p/snu/ioerwp/no26.html |work=Working Paper Series |publisher=Institute of Economic Research, Seoul National University}} The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it's inappropriate to call them "slaves", while some scholars describe them as serfs.{{cite book|editor=Gwyn Campbell|title=Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia|author=Bok Rae Kim|chapter=Nobi: A Korean System of Slavery|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J0iRAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA153|date=23 November 2004|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-75917-9|pages=153–157}}{{cite book|last1=Palais|first1=James B.|title=Views on Korean social history|publisher=Institute for Modern Korean Studies, Yonsei University|isbn=9788971414415|page=50|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xxi5AAAAIAAJ|access-date=15 February 2017|language=en|quote=Another target of his critique is the insistence that slaves (nobi) in Korea, especially in Choson dynasty, were closer to serfs (nongno) than true slaves (noye) in Europe and America, enjoying more freedom and independence than what a slave would normally be allowed.|year=1998}} The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population.{{cite book|last1=Rodriguez|first1=Junius P.|title=The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=9780874368857|page=392|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ATq5_6h2AT0C&q=%2210+percent+of+the+total+population+on+average,+but+it+could+rise+up+to+one-third+of+the+total%22&pg=RA1-PA392|access-date=14 February 2017|language=en|year=1997}} In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated,{{cite book|last1=Kim|first1=Youngmin|last2=Pettid|first2=Michael J.|title=Women and Confucianism in Choson Korea: New Perspectives|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=9781438437774|page=141|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UwgUa6WWFBMC&pg=PA141|access-date=14 February 2017|language=en|date=2011-11-01}} and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea.{{cite book|last1=Campbell|first1=Gwyn|title=Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135759179|page=163|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J0iRAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA163|access-date=14 February 2017|language=en|date=2004-11-23}} The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87 and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894, but traces remained until 1930.

{{See also|Slavery in Thailand|Slavery in Cambodia|Slavery in Vietnam|Slavery in Laos}}

During the millennium long Chinese domination of Vietnam, Vietnam was a large source of slave girls who were used as sex slaves in China.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gKCea9iRga4C&q=%22slave+girls+of+viet%22&pg=PT232|title=Vietnam Past and Present: The North|last=Henley|first=Andrew Forbes, David|publisher=Cognoscenti Books|isbn=9781300568070|language=en}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yaeESYegRXMC&q=%22slave+girls+of+viet%22&pg=PA56|title=The Vermilion Bird|last=Schafer|first=Edward Hetzel|date=1967|publisher=University of California Press|language=en}} The slave girls of Viet were even eroticized in Tang dynasty poetry.

There was a large slave class in Khmer Empire who built the enduring monuments in Angkor and did most of the heavy work.{{cite web|url=http://travel.mongabay.com/cambodia/angkorwat.htm |title=Cambodia Angkor Wat |publisher=Travel.mongabay.com |access-date=4 December 2011}} Slaves had been taken captive from the mountain tribes.{{Cite web|url=http://asia.msu.edu/seasia/Cambodia/history.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070703010536/http://asia.msu.edu/seasia/Cambodia/history.html|url-status=dead|title=Windows on Asia|archivedate=3 July 2007}} People unable to pay back a debt to the upper ruling class could be sentenced to work as a slave too.{{cite web|url=http://www.cambodia-travel.com/khmer/society.htm |title=Khmer Society – Angkor Wat |publisher=Cambodia-travel.com |access-date=4 December 2011}}

In Siam (Thailand), war captives became the property of the king. During the reign of Rama III (1824–1851), there were an estimated 46,000 war slaves. Slaves from independent hill populations were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese, the Anamites, and the Cambodians" (Colquhoun 1885:53).{{cite web|url=http://kyotoreviewsea.org/slavery4.htm |title=Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Northern Thailand |publisher=Kyotoreviewsea.org |access-date=4 December 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101009132129/http://kyotoreviewsea.org/slavery4.htm |archive-date=9 October 2010 }} Slavery was not abolished in Siam until 1905.{{cite web |url=http://www.thailandsworld.com/index.cfm?p=213 |title=The Kingdom of Ayutthaya |publisher=Thailandsworld.com |access-date=4 December 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080721192404/http://www.thailandsworld.com/index.cfm?p=213 |archive-date=21 July 2008}}

Yi people in Yunnan practiced a complicated form of slavery. People were split into the Black Yi (nobles, 7% of the population), White Yi (commoners), Ajia (33% of the Yi population) and Xiaxi (10%). Ajia and Xiaxi were slave castes. The White Yi were not slaves but had no freedom of movement. The Black Yi were famous for their slave-raids on Han Chinese communities. After 1959 some 700,000 slaves were freed.{{cite web|url=http://www.istp.murdoch.edu.au/ISTP/casestudies/Case_Studies_Asia/tour_yi/tour_yi.html |title=The Yi Nationality |publisher=Istp.murdoch.edu.au |date=3 October 1999 |access-date=4 December 2011}}{{Cite web|url=http://yi.peoples.org/learn/profiles/general.htm|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071203101749/http://yi.peoples.org/learn/profiles/general.htm|url-status=dead|title=General Profile of the Yi|archivedate=3 December 2007}}{{cite web|url=http://www.china.org.cn/e-groups/shaoshu/shao-2-yi.htm |title=The Yi ethnic minority |publisher=China.org.cn |access-date=4 December 2011}}

{{See also|Slavery in Brunei|Slavery in Indonesia|Slavery in Malaysia}}

File:KITLV 26556 - Isidore van Kinsbergen - Two slaves Raja of Buleleng- I Loeh Sari and I Mrijakti - Around 1870.tif

Slaves in Toraja society in Indonesia were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Torajan slaves were sold and shipped out to Java and Siam. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women—a crime punishable by death. Slavery was abolished in 1863 in all Dutch colonies.{{cite web |url=http://stampslandia.webng.com/gallery2/niz/niz_old.htm |title=Stamps |publisher=Stamslandia.webng.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080922042728/http://stampslandia.webng.com/gallery2/niz/niz_old.htm |archive-date=22 September 2008 }}{{cite web|url=http://www.everyculture.com/East-Southeast-Asia/Toraja-History-and-Cultural-Relations.html |title=Toraja History and Cultural Relations |publisher=Everyculture.com |access-date=4 December 2011}}

Slavery was practiced by the tribal Austronesian peoples in pre-Spanish Philippines. Slaves were part of the lowest caste (alipin) in ancient Filipino societies. A caste which also included commoners. However, the characterization of alipin as "slaves" is not entirely accurate. Modern scholars in Philippine history prefer to use more accurate terms like "serfs" or "bondsmen" instead.{{cite book|author=William Henry Scott|title =Barangay: sixteenth-century Philippine culture and society|publisher =Ateneo de Manila University Press|year =1994}}

File:Garay warships of pirates in the Sulu Sea.jpg pirate ships in the Sulu Sea, {{circa|1850}}]]

Slavery in Southeast Asia reached its peak in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when fleets of lanong and garay warships of the Iranun and Banguingui people started engaging in piracy and coastal raids for slave and plunder throughout Southeast Asia from their territories within the Sultanate of Sulu and Maguindanao. It is estimated that from 1770 to 1870, 200,000 to 300,000 people were enslaved by Iranun and Banguingui slavers. They came from ships and settlements as far as the Malacca Strait, Java, the southern coast of China and the islands beyond the Makassar Strait. The scale was so massive that the word for "pirate" in Malay became Lanun, an exonym of the Iranun people. Male captives of the Iranun and the Banguingui were treated brutally, even fellow Muslim captives were not spared. They were usually forced serve as galley slaves on the ships of their captors. Female captives, however, were usually treated better. There were no recorded accounts of rapes, though some were starved for discipline. Most of the slaves were Tagalogs, Visayans, and "Malays" (including Bugis, Mandarese, Iban, and Makassar). There were also occasional European and Chinese captives who were usually ransomed off through Tausug intermediaries of the Sulu Sultanate.{{cite book|author=James Francis Warren|title =Iranun and Balangingi: Globalization, Maritime Raiding and the Birth of Ethnicity|publisher =NUS Press|year =2002|pages=53–56|isbn =9789971692421|url =https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/iranun-and-balangingi}}

There was also a slave trade that occurred in Singapore which involved people from Flores and Sulawesi by Bugis slavers and Minangkabau, Siak and Pekanbaru slaves obtained by Malay slavers documented in person by Abdullah Abdul Kadir in his autobiography.{{cite journal |last1=Herzog |first1=Shawna |title=Domesticating Labor: An Illicit Slave Trade to The British Straits Settlements, 1811–1845 |journal=Journal of World History |date=2017 |volume=28 |issue=3–4 |pages=341–369 |doi=10.1353/jwh.2017.0035}}

European powers finally succeeded in the mid-1800s in cutting off these raids through use of steam-powered warships.Thomas H. McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels, University of California Press, 1998James Francis Warren, "[https://web.archive.org/web/20141216235524/http://repository.cc.sophia.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/123456789/15569/1/200000079942_000127000_303.pdf The Port of Jolo and the Sulu Zone Slave Trade]", The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies No. 25, 2007

{{Further information|Human trafficking in Southeast Asia}}

The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer") were forced to work by the Japanese military in World War II. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.

Within the Asia-Pacific region, there were as of 2015 an estimated 11.7 million trafficked people; within the Asia Pacific, the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), which includes Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand and Vietnam, "features some of the most extensive flows of migration and human trafficking."[http://www.dw.com/en/why-southeast-asia-struggles-to-tackle-modern-day-slavery/a-18371333 Why Southeast Asia struggles to tackle modern-day slavery], Deutsche Welle (9 April 2015). Industries with major problems with human trafficking and forced labor in Southeast Asia include fisheries, agriculture, manufacturing, construction and domestic work. The child sex trade has also plagued southeast Asia, where "[m]ost sources agree that far more than 1 million underage children are 'effectively enslaved{{'"}} as of 2006.{{cite web|work=Weekend Edition Saturday|publisher=NPR|title=Tracking the Child Sex Trade in Southeast Asia|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5201813|date=11 February 2006}}

Thai women are frequently lured and sold to brothels where they are forced to work off their price. Burmese are commonly trafficked into Thailand for work in factories, as domestics, for street begging directed by organized gangs.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), an estimated 800,000

people are subject to forced labor in Myanmar.{{cite web|url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GC29Ae02.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050404025755/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GC29Ae02.html |url-status=unfit |archive-date=4 April 2005 |title=ILO cracks the whip at Yangon |publisher=Atimes.com |date=29 March 2005 |access-date=4 December 2011}} In November 2006, the International Labour Organization announced it will be seeking "to prosecute members of the ruling Myanmar junta for crimes against humanity" over the continuous forced labor of its citizens by the military at the International Court of Justice.{{Cite news|url=http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-11-16T163442Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-276537-1.xml&archived=False |title=ILO seeks to charge Myanmar junta with atrocities |publisher=Reuters |date=16 November 2006 |access-date=17 November 2006 }}{{dead link|date=July 2021|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}

As of end-2015, Singapore has acceded to international standards of prosecuting and convicting human traffickers under the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.{{cite news|last1=Aw|first1=Cheng Wei|title=Few understand full impact and extent of human trafficking: Survey|url=http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/manpower/few-understand-full-impact-and-extent-of-human-trafficking-survey|access-date=1 December 2015|publisher=Straits Times}}

• Gwyn Campbell (2004), The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Titas Chakraborty and Matthias van Rossum. "Slave Trade and Slavery in Asia-- New Perspectives", Journal of Social History 54:1, pp. 1–14.
• Chatterjee, Indrani (2006). Slavery and South Asian History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Jeff Eden (2018), Slavery and Empire in Central Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Scott C. Levi (2002), "Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 12:3, pp. 277-288.
• {{cite journal |last1=Fischer-Tiné |first1=Harald |title='White women degrading themselves to the lowest depths' : European networks of prostitution and colonial anxieties in British India and Ceylon ca. 1880–1914 |journal=The Indian Economic & Social History Review |date=June 2003 |volume=40 |issue=2 |pages=163–190 |doi=10.1177/001946460304000202 |s2cid=146273713 |language=en |issn=0019-4646}}
• Lal, K. S. (1994). The Muslim Slave System in Medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
• Salim Kidwai (1985). "Sultans, Eunuchs and Domestics: New Forms of Bondage in Medieval India", in Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney (eds), Chains of Servitude: bondage and slavery in India. Madras: Orient Longman.
• Major, Andrea (2014). Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843. Liverpool University Press.
• R.C. Majumdar, The History and Culture of the Indian People. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
• Samonova, Elena (2019). Modern Slavery and Bonded Labor in South Asia: A Human Rights-Based Approach. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Andre Wink (1991). Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Leiden: Brill Academic, {{ISBN|978-9004095090}}

• Slavery in the Mongol Empire
• Slavery in the Ottoman Empire

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{notelist}}

• [http://www.memoirestbarth.com/EN/ Mémoire St Barth : Saint-Barthelemy's history (slave trade, slavery, abolitions)]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20220505234330/https://www.ungift.org/ UN.GIFT] – Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110521041657/http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID%3D8780%26URL_DO%3DDO_TOPIC%26URL_SECTION%3D201.html "Slave Trade Archives", UNESCO]
• "[http://www.parliament.uk/slavetrade Parliament and the British Slave Trade]" at UK Parliament.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20140209215003/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slav_fact.cfm Digital History – "Slavery Fact Sheets"]
• "[https://web.archive.org/web/20121024123523/http://www.voiceofdharma.com/books/mssmi/ Muslim Slave System in Medieval India]" by K.S. Lal at Voice of Dharma.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120103172434/http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/abolition/ "Scotland and the Abolition of the Slave Trade"] at Education Scotland.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20091026211238/http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/easterntrade.html The Forgotten Holocaust: The Eastern Slave Trade]
• [http://www.blackhistory4schools.com/slavetrade/ Teaching resources about Slavery and Abolition on blackhistory4schools.com]
• [http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=332&issue=115 "What really ended slavery?"] Robin Blackburn, author of a two-volume history of the slave trade, interviewed by International Socialism
• David Brion Davis, [http://southernspaces.org/2009/american-and-british-slave-trade-abolition-perspective "American and British Slave Trade Abolition in Perspective"], Southern Spaces, 4 February 2009.
• [http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/9/the_slave_next_door_human_trafficking The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today] – video report by Democracy Now!
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120716144749/http://ull.ac.uk/specialcollections/archives/slaveryarchivesources.shtml Archives on slavery at the University of London]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120316161536/http://www.slaverymuseum.co.uk/ Slavery Museum, Great Britain]

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Asia

Category:Slavery in Asia

Slavery

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